As a renowned African freshwater crab expert, Northern Michigan University Biology Professor Neil Cumberlidge amassed a collection of more than 1,000 preserved specimens representing various species over his extended career. On the verge of his Sept. 1 retirement after 34 years as an educator and scholar at NMU, he recently sent the specimens to London to join the crustacean research collection at the National History Museum's Darwin Center.
“I wanted them to be available to scholars from all over the world, and housed in a place where they would be curated professionally into perpetuity,” Cumberlidge said. “As a scientific associate at the Natural History Museum who has been going there for 20 years, I knew it would be an appropriate place for my collection, in part because most African crab researchers are based in Europe or Africa. And a colleague from the University of Liverpool gifted me half of his collection when he retired and the other half to the museum, so it made sense to unify the entire lot under one roof again in the UK.”
“This is a very significant scientific collection, whose importance is widely recognized by specialists in a number of countries,” said senior crustacean researcher Paul Clark, who received a collections grant from the museum to travel from London to Marquette and coordinate the complex packing process and expensive transport. He was assisted by NMU biology undergraduate student Maddie Indermuhler.
It took five weeks to pack the specimens individually in a way that prevented them from being damaged in transit and—importantly—complied with international shipping guidelines.
“The crab specimens were preserved in glass jars with ethanol,” Cumberlidge said. “You can't send such things through the mail because they're flammable and you're limited in how much liquid you can use since 9/11. So Paul came up with a special method of covering them with ethanol-soaked cheesecloth and double-wrapping them in sealed, thick plastic envelopes cut to size. It kept them in contact with a preservative long enough to make the journey to London.”
When the packing was completed, the collection filled 11 large cartons. They were loaded into the Biology field van and driven to Menomonie, the closest shipping location for DHL, the preferred company of the Natural History Museum. The cartons were mailed on Aug. 13 and arrived safely in London two days later.
The NMU freshwater crab specimens were collected in a number of different African countries over many years, either by Cumberlidge during field surveys, or by other scientists who gifted theirs to him to further his research.
The collection has also provided a robust education for generations of students throughout Cumberlidge's tenure at NMU. It included representatives of all seven families of freshwater crabs found globally, and of nearly every genus and species found in continental Africa, the Seychelles, and Madagascar. It also included the original specimens of some of the 70 new species that Cumberlidge has described to date during his career at NMU, with many of his students as co-authors.
Cumberlidge earned many honors over the years. In May 2023, he received The Crustacean Society Excellence in Research Award (TCSERA) for significantly advancing the field of crab biology.
